Fables: Lost and Found

 

I used to write fables. Not the Aesop kind, not at all. He has probably turned a few thousand times in his grave every time Ive referred to one of my flights of fancies in the creative, and occasionally dark moods that brought forth some intense feelings to this blog.

They were funny, sad, reminiscing, pensive, daring and full of chutzpah. I even had a separate space called Cesmots.com – meaning: These words. It was a beautiful home, full of pride and class. I took so much pride in it and the few readers who flocked, they did with loyalty. Each resonated with a different bunch, and it was a joy to see the connection.

Then life happened, and I had to shut it down, coz I wasn’t writing much and the site cost money.

I have most saved I think. One day they will find their way out and outside of this ether, and perhaps they will dance in black and white. Maybe they won’t. One can dream and work hard towards a goal, and all we can be sure is the sweat and the tears and the little victories, but the final goal is always intangible. Yes, of course there is faith, if not the way is painful and ridden with potholes. ..and despite the fact that most of us have varying degrees of masochism in us, most well meant paths are pleasant on hindsight.

Hindsight is 20/20 and every time we decide to quit or reach a dead end, all we have to do is look back and then on turning around, the way is cleared, just a bit more and so we skip on.

That said, despite being a busy day, I dug up the archives and remembered one particular one I had written way back in 2008.

A Suitable Moment. 

Any old timers around, who recognize this one? Most who commented on that piece are still around, in their personal orbs :)

Life suddenly feels like a fable.

It feels like fables must come back. They were a crutch back then, and maybe now, they would prop me up. The familiarity of one’s words and the comfort they offer.

***

One of the hardest things in life is to let go of what we thought was real.

All things heart of course, but in the head and in tangibles too.

It feels like homecoming though. I was meant to write those again. I can already feel my fingers itch with excitement. Joy.

please don’t go {fable}

The jet lag was creeping in strong and silent, but she knew she could push it off some more time. She pushed the curtains aside and stood in the shadows. Light from the parking lot falling on her in streaks, swaying with the gentle breeze from the vent, and she peered out into the dark sky.

He came up behind her as she stared into the unknown.

He watched with her.

He knew what she didn’t. It was a knowledge that he carried in his heart, heavy with each labored breath reaching her neck and earlobes. A knowledge that guilted his brain and lightened his soul, at the same time. Hurting one while he pleasured the other, pleasured himself, in a way only he would understand. A masochistic moment hung in space and time as he held her waist and drew her close to him.

They stood there, hoping time would stand still.

He kissed her ears, and whispered into them.

With a pang, and a complete surrender of her own desire and need, she put her hand around his neck and head, and whispered back. Kissing each other with lips barely touching skin, she turned in his lock and held his agonized face, cradling it, wishing to earase his anxiousness away, wanting to convince him with her words, eyes and touch that though she wanted more, she was perfectly happy with his touch, and she yearned for it.

He apologized and she shushed.

She hugged him tight and held on, as he walked her away from the windows.

He wanted her for himself, and she was putty in his hands.

She sighed and kissed him, and allowed herself to be in that moment., Heady, sleepy, sexy and full of love. It was a concoction no drink or drug would be able to replicate. She smiled under his lips, their hands touching and caressing, at times firm, at times soft, and she was on her back. Eyes closed, she sighed and felt his weight next to her. She clung on, still in conversation, like the kisses were just a part of the dialog that they were in, heated, arguing, loving and cajoling and convincing. In turmoil, happiness, glee, in love and in guilt.

Fingers laced and locked. Tight. She hurt in a way that made her wince in happiness.

She craned her neck to take in as much of his lips as she could.

He knew she was high.

She knew he had the power.

He pulled her close, as he lay on his back and closed his eyes. His arm cradling her and holding her face, as she listened to his heart beat a steady tempo. She smiled onto his shirt and chest and sighed. With her arms around his waist, she closed her now very sleepy drunk eyes and savored the moment. He kissed her forehead and eyes still closed they stayed in that embrace.

Till a dog barked. In the distance. In her dream. A slight, faint woof.

She could feel a tug and a shifting, and she held on tighter. Was it skin, was it cloth, or was it just a weave of her dreams? She held on. But she was losing grip, and sleep won.

***

With a start she woke up, cold and alone, with the light on at her bedside. Without stretching her arm, she knew she was alone. She could feel his presence in her heart.

“please don’t go, just a little more time? Please?”

“Just a bit longer? I’ll sleep and you can go?”

“Okay, can you at least come back? Please?”

“I just want to be with you, nothing else. i want to touch you. I want to sleep touching you.”

“I am here only tonight, please be with me?”

“Don’t go? please?”

“I love you, please stay?”

Lines hurtling at her as they rushed in, memories, half drunk, half sleepy, sunk in love and wanting and the need to be loved and wanted. Affection, childishness and warmth, jostling in her words, as she remembered the tones in which she spoke the same words.

With tears soaking her very soft down pillow, she cried loudly. Life was unfair, and the Gods couldn’t care much, and she was hurting, a bittersweet pain that stung sharp at her neck, lips and ears, every place his lips had touched her.

Loneliness was a blessing, when one had to complain about being lonely and being left alone.

***

Loosely based on this song sung by Pragathi

 

 

places I don’t go anymore {fable}

Long ago while on the metro, I was seated adjacent to a middle-aged well dressed lady who had a small book open and was scribbling into it at a  steady pace. My curiosity had gotten the better of me and I stared at her without realizing I was.

You see, I love people watching. I love observing their little quirks, what makes them tick and one thing leads to another and am building tragic love stories into their lives or creating grander versions of where they came from and how the world will surprise them tomorrow. They didn’t call me a dreamer for nothing I suppose!

So the lady looked up and out the window, pursed her lips, squinted her eyes into a distance and her brow furrowed. There really was nothing out there to see, but the gray stony walls of the underground tunnel, but she stared into the distance alright. I watched her stare into the distance. Without a warning, she looked at my reflection in the glass window and smiled at me. Instinctively, I smiled back, and averted my eyes. Embarrassed at being caught staring, embarrassed for my own wild dreams for her.

She turned her neck back at me and asked me in a soft simple voice.

“Where are we? I lost track of time.” 

I mumbled the station and glanced up at the map to help me out, coz since I had to get off at the last stop anyway, I was not keeping track myself.

I had no idea why she explained herself but she did. “I write things down of the places I don’t want to go to anymore, and then I staple them down, so I don’t accidentally go there.” 

I nod my head, ike that made perfect sense,. As an adult, at once confused and on the verge of shame as I felt an intruder into her mind-space, and making what I think was a half-baked attempt to look nonchalant. Yet, there was that inquisitive child in me who wanted answers. What did she mean? Places? What places? Like travel? She didn’t look like she was traveling? Except from work, just like the rest of us? What are these places that she doesn’t want to go anymore?

..and without a blink, all of these questions steadily poured out of my wide brown eyes. The one outlier in my body language that I can most likely live without, but cannot. It’s a curse and a blessing depending on the answers I get from the recipients I aim those eyes at. This time it was a blessing, coz she miles again, a knowing smile, with her nose crinkling at the corners where her blue eyes met and drew themselves back into laughing lines, clear crows feet that belied the age that the rest of her assured.

Damn those eyes. They didn’t call them windows to our soul for nothing.

She started speaking, low and clear and drifting in and out of my path, like she was talking to no one in particular.

“There are places that our heart and mind takes us. Places that we don’t always want to go. Happy rolling hills and the meadows and the ferris wheels in the county fair, and the hot tub in our backyard and the family kitchen with the aromas of thanksgiving dinners, and the diaper smells mixed with baby formula during midnights. They are wonderful aren’t they? Pleasant and happy memories and flashes of life that wrote memoirs in our heart. The chapters by which we mark our lives in this journey. They don;t need reminders or jogs for us to bring back to our present and toss them around, play ball with them and then folks them neatly and tuck them away in their proper place, filed away for later references. Those are the places that we always want to go back to.”

I smile and nod at the steadiness with which she recounted them all, like she recited from a  script, a well worn script. One with dog ears and smudged pencil lines, and folded numerous times, going yellow with age.

“Then there are places that I don’t go anymore. You know the kind am taking about.” She paused and looked at me with an eyebrow raised, and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

I sigh.

I knew where this conversation was going. I turn back at the window and stare out. Thinking back to the places that I didn’t want to go.

“Tears forming icicles, from harsh barren terrain. Without a living thing in sight. The places with such thick trees that they form a barricade hard to scale through. The kind of place where the only whisper is of the voice in your head that tells you repeatedly that you are alone and that no one will ever find you. Like when you are spinning on the top of that very same ferris wheel and everyone else has disappeared. Those places. I write those down and staple them down.”

“Does it help?”

“Mostly. If I go to the same place twice, I write and then burn the paper. Symbolic, but it helps me. I never go to those places again.”

She shrugs. I look through her holding me down yet failing.

“We are nomads. In our head. Yet, we are also survivors. We have to burn the bridges that we do not want to cross anymore.”

I nod and turn my misty eyes out through the window.

“Try it sometime, I can tell you visit the same dark places a lot.”

She whispers into my ear as she gets up and slides off the train and gets lost in the crowd.

 

the wheels {fable}

The wheels: They never stop.

“Am scared” 

Icy cold sneaky fingers wrapped her fragile heart and squeezed it blue. She gasped, unable to breathe steady anymore. Her breath got shorter, her eyes wider. The tongue ran dry and she bit her upper lid hard, willing for the words that formed in her head to not spill. Once they spilled, they were out. They would escape, forming concrete words, visuals and audible. They became real. As long as they stayed in, they were not palpable. Still dismissive in nature. 

She wanted the fear gone.

“Am scared” 

She thought and shut her eyes tight. 

The words swirled. Like dark gray sinuous curls of smoke from a depressing English landscape, the words floated in her mind. 

“Friendships die, silently. Like dying embers of a flame. Painful and slow” 

The words struck her with a force. There was truth to it, she had to admit, even if she didn’t want to. 

A tear escaped her eyes and instinctively, she swallowed the rest down. She pushed a few wayward strands of her hair away from her face, blinked rapidly and drawing her mouth into a straight line, she breathed in deep a few times. With a firm turn of her head, her eyes opened, and she looked straight ahead, misty-eyed, but with a sharpness that belied her quivering lip and her now pink nose. 

*****

“No! No you don’t trust me anymore! If you did, you wouldn’t have rushed me out of the house in such a hurry. Not once, but every single time I came in, you couldn’t wait for me to leave!”

“I love you too you know, it hurts.”

“Are you really my best friend? Will you be my partner in crime?”

“You are scared of me right? I scare you! haha. You are scared what I will do with myself aren’t you?” 

“I am sorry I failed you. I didn’t do anything, am incapable of understanding and providing any value. Am sorry I failed you. I wish I knew more to help you.” 

“You are giving up on me aren’t you? You sound like you are. I can’t help being me, you know?” 

“You actually knew that? Wow!”

*

” We soul mates, remember?”

“No! Why would I give up? Good friends are hard to come by, and am not giving up on one of my best ones”

“Shush, NO one has done as much as you have, and I will never take you or your effort or time for granted” 

“No, you don’t scare me. In fact, I worry about you. You add on more to your plate and overthink more than it is necessary!”

“Yes, I am that kind of friend. I’ll help you get rid of the body even if I don’t approve of you killing in the first place”

“I love you da”

“I know you better than you know, and I know what you are capable of. I trust you more than I trust me”

*****

She wished she could go back to any of those conversation nuggets that fired her brain, making her recall the nuances, the intonations, the pause in the words, the mood of the moment.  Any one of them. They weren’t all pleasant. Some more emotional than others, some more playful than others, some more earnest than others. Regardless of the mood, thinking back made her eyes smile and tear alternately. 

Coz you see, those times were good times even if they were not perfect. 

They were friends. They were in touch. They were talking. The channels were open. They trusted and fought and made up and hugged and kissed and wanted to be with each other, however bad the disagreement was. 

….But time never stood still for anyone. The wheels are turning. Always. Every minute passed becomes a memory to think back fondly. Coz most memories bring a smile, some teary smiles, some happy smiles, but smiles they were. 

“The wheel turns and turns and turns: it never stops and stands still.” 

.but with every turn, one is racing to create the best possible memory. A lesson learnt after many bad turns of the wheel, that nothing was worth losing what was once precious. So, she opened a window and tapped out a single word and hit Send. 

With a smile on her now simple, calm face, she went to bed and for the first time in a long while, slept through the night.